Rants of the Everyday Superhero Housewife
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: Because Sue's just a normal woman, really, isn't she?  This story is open to requests.
1. Why My Husband Is Useless In The Kitchen

**This is just to prove that Sue is a normal woman still, as she so much loves to remind us in the second movie. She's a normal woman, and this was so tempting to write.**

**Why My Husband Is Useless At Mealtimes**

Usually, at dinner time, it's chaos in the kitchen. The kids are bouncing around every available space in the room, asking constantly 'is it ready yet?' until part of me wants to just throw it away and cancel dinner that night. The dog is usually wagging his tail and bashing every available kitchen cupboard or child's leg with it, because he thinks their jumping is a game that he can join in on. I'm cooking, struggling to make sure that dinner is equally ready on time, so that Valeria doesn't whine that Franklin's is ready first and that she has to wait a gruelling extra fifteen seconds for hers to be served up.

But the real dinner time frustration comes about ten minutes before everything's finished, when all that needs to be done is pasta or peas to be strained, and for things to be dished up onto the plates. That's the time where hope starts to surface, in the gap between things getting finished, and the kids starting to feign deadly starvation on the kitchen floor. I start to see a light at the end of the tunnel, which in my life means that I realise I'll get to sit down and read my book in peace even though I have to wash up as well.

It's also the time where my husband surfaces.

Ok, so Reed's not the most observant man in the world, but I didn't think he was completely blind. He'll spend his time after working in the lab nowadays unwinding in front of the television, even though the kids are in full reign of the channels, so he usually ends up unwinding in front the children's programmes. Then, when he realises that the smell of food is more tempting than what's on television; and the even bigger give away, that the child who chose the programme isn't even in the room; he'll wander on down to the kitchen, where I'm struggling to cook while working my way around two kids with too much energy, and a dog with a far too energetic tail.

But it's not the fact that he's come to add to my cooking audience that drives me insane, it's how he participates. He'll take one look in the kitchen, see Franklin jumping on the spot, watching with keen interest while I serve up the dinners, and Valeria, not quite as tall as her brother but trying to jump just as high as him, and that's not forgetting Alfie, our hyperactive Beagle, thumping his tail so hard against the kitchen cabinet that it's a wonder it's not either hurting him or denting the cupboard. He'll look at it all, take a breathe, and ask me the question that makes me want to bang him over the head with a saucepan and dish up his remains for Alfie's dinner.

"Anything I can help with, dear?"

Anything he can help with?

He's kidding, right?

For the duration of my time in the kitchen, usually around an hour, he's been trying to get caught up with what he missed during the episode of 'Transformers' that Franklin had watched before school, which he'd missed because, damn shame, he had research to do for a lecture he would be giving the following day. Honestly, universities just didn't think about the importance of children's television programmes.

Whilst Reed would have been more involved in the fiction characters than the children either side of him on the couch, I had figured out what we were having for dinner, cooked it, waited for it to cook whilst I'd done the ironing, and then made sure that Reed was keeping an eye on the dinner whilst I walked Alfie to the park at the end of the road to do his business. To no surprise, Reed hadn't moved a single inch when I'd come back. I don't even think he'd have noticed I'd gone at all if I hadn't stood in front of the television to make sure that he was aware that the oven was on. Then, when I went back into the kitchen, telling everyone that dinner would be about quarter of an hour, the kids would follow.

Because, you know, kids have no time perception when it comes to mealtimes. "Fifteen minutes" meant that it was being dished up soon, and there was the nagging thought that if they stood there and watched my every move, it would make it go faster, and they could eat sooner. Honestly, if a stranger came into our house and saw this happening, they'd think the children hadn't been fed since the same time yesterday.

They had been. I should probably point that out.

So, after I've cooked, cleaned, and walked the dog in the space of an hour, all whilst clinging to my sanity, Reed has the courage, the undeniably brave male guts, to pop his head into the kitchen and see if I needed any help.

An hour ago, I'd have needed help, when Franklin and Valeria couldn't settle on same meal that they wanted. Valeria wanted Fish Fingers. Franklin wanted Chicken Dippers. There was no compromise there. Not until we decided to go with potato wedges.

Twenty minutes ago, I'd have needed help, when Alfie whined his way into the kitchen, nudging my legs until I agreed to leave the cooking to one side so that his needs could come before the hunger of the rest of the family. Why couldn't dogs be _woman's _best friend instead? Surely then they'd understand that walks had to fit in around the housework, not the other way around.

Five minutes ago, when the children were jumping up and down like they'd overdosed on E numbers the second they'd left the school gates, I'd have needed help.

But after all that, when I was managing to coax the kids to sit up at the table and wait patiently, and more importantly for my nagging headache, quietly, for their dinners, when all that needed doing was to put the food on the plates and walk a very short distance to the table where it would no doubt be devoured in one eighth of the time it had taken me to prepare it, that's when Reed offered his services.

"Anything I can help with, dear?"

Yes, darling. Pass me the wine.

**Remember, let me know if you want any requests!**


	2. Why Your Mother's Unwelcome In The House

**This is just to prove that Sue is a normal woman still, as she so much loves to remind us in the second movie. She's a normal woman, and this was so tempting to write.**

**Why Your Mother Is Unwelcome In The House**

The door shut, perhaps too quickly to be classed as a polite way of seeing guests off, but this was no ordinary guest. No, this was the devil in guest form. Actually, she was probably worse than that. The devil had to be afraid of her, it was the only logical explanation for the fact that she wasn't already the ruler of Hell.

Ok, it sounds cruel, and I'm not usually one to show my guests out of my house with more determination than someone evading a charging bull. This is different.

Imagine having a house guest who's striving so much for perfection, that the mere fact that my children aren't speaking fluent Shakespearean at the ages of seven and three means that she has to lie about how well the children are really doing just so that the neighbours don't disown her. Not our neighbours, of course. Our neighbours could care whether or not my children are even speaking English, let alone a language that no one in public schools understands anymore. It's _her _neighbours. The neighbour of the beast, as it were.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce my mother-in-law. Evelyn Richards.

_No one _likes their mother-in-law. Not if they're sane. Ok, so a _few _girls out there actually get lucky, and find a mother-in-law who _doesn't _make them want to dive into the pits of Hell readily, if it weren't for the fact that their second mother would already be there waiting for them. Getting this lucky is probably harder than getting lucky with Brad Pitt. That is, of course, unless you take fate into your own hands, and find an older woman who is extremely pleasant and then marry her son no matter how much you'd really prefer the world to just open up and swallow you.

Mother-in-laws are one of those unavoidable trials in life that we just have to put up with. In the same category, you'll also find such events as streams of lava destroying small Hawaiian villages, hurricanes destroying hundreds of lives and homes, and global warming. My mother-in-law, however, is not a natural disaster. She's a _constant _disaster. Only there's no charity benefit concert hosted by Bono to relieve the suffering.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she's a charming person. I'm sure she has plenty of friends that adore her personality. I'm sure her parents even loved her as a child.

I'm just not quite sure that I can put up with her in my house for one more visit.

The fact that we live at one end of the country and her at another was a blissful separation, one that could easily be made more enjoyable if we'd go a bit further up north and cross the border into Canada, and if she could go a bit further south and remain completely isolated and frozen in place in Antarctica. However, the large distance did mean that when she visited, it wasn't just for a cup of tea or to mind the children for the night.

Oh no.

It lasted a couple of weeks.

Not a weekend, not a week. _A couple of weeks._

Have you ever had to survive a couple of weeks with your mother-in-law? It's hard, isn't it? After a while, you start to beg for one of you not to make it out alive. At first, you have a clear indication of who you'd like to be that human sacrifice, but a few more days leaves you feeling not so fussy about the choice.

With my mother-in-law, you have to be on edge all the time. While I'm doing ridiculous tasks like helping Franklin with his homework and making dinner from whatever food we've got left from the cupboards the day before the weekly shop, Reed's mother, dear, sweet old Evelyn, is watching like a hawk from the corner, and inside, she's _laughing_.

Either that, or she's watching for the perfect opportunity to snap and kill us all.

One of the hardest things to do for the three weeks she was visiting was to hold my tongue - something that Evelyn doesn't even try to do. It goes the same way every time she arrives. She'll pick an awkward time, usually just after Reed's left for work, giving lectures at a nearby university, so that he doesn't have to see her for at least eight hours, and turn up on the doorstep with bags. _Hundreds _of bags. Every time I open the door and see her standing there, I get scared that she's planning to move in with us.

The first thing she complains about is the dog. Alfie's a beagle, so he's got so much energy that he'd still be buzzing around the house even if we took him for twelve walks a day. He's a friendly dog, so he'll try and jump up at her, thinking that he's going to get attention from her, just like he does from every other poor soul who suffers one of his bouncy greetings. Poor Alfie. He should have known by now that when Grandma comes to stay, the pick-me-ups he's so used to go down the drain, and are replaced with put-downs instead. It takes a lot of dog treats to make up for Evelyn's comments. Her favourites include "savage beast", "foul smelling creature", and her all time personal favourite, which never fails: "a danger to my grandchildren".

Sometimes, I wish that Alfie wasn't such an affectionate sop, so that perhaps he'd be a danger to _her_.

Then, she'll demand a tour of the house, wanting to see the latest developments in interior design. Every time, I want to scream at her that we don't have time for DIY. Between saving the world, Reed's lectures, picking Franklin up from school and Valeria up from nursery, before carting Franklin off to his after-school clubs and friends houses, not to mention walking Alfie, keeping up with Alfie's vets bills, and all the other bills we have to pay off, we just about have time to keep the house standing, let alone have time for adjustments. Especially adjustments that might have occurred since her last visit all of three months ago. Who has money to build an extension or re-do the bathroom after _Christmas_?

But I'll smile, and give her the tour of the house she's been in a million times.

First stop is the downstairs. That's when the '_hmm's _start. "Hmm…that looks like damp to me. Hmm…weren't you going to fix that banister, dear? Hmm…I see you haven't done the washing up. Hmm…is that the _dog's _muddy footprints? Hmm…I see you've still got that '_interesting' _artwork your aunt brought for you. Hmm…is that a games console? Are you _really _sure that's a good idea for Franklin? He's a bit young for all that violence, isn't he? Hmm…hmm…_hmm_…"

The temptation not put a sound-proof force field around her head is incredible. Instead, I calmly make up the excuses that she no doubt doesn't believe.

Yes, that _is _damp. Someone's coming to look at it on Friday morning.

Yes, we _did _fix the banister, but that was two months ago and since then, it has been broken _again _by _your _son's experiments.

No, I _haven't _done the washing up. I haven't had time. We don't _all _have a pensioner's time management skills (that part I _didn't _say out loud).

Yes, that _is _the dog's muddy footprints by the back door. None of my children have paws for feet, so they must belong to Alfie.

Yes, I _have _still got the artwork my aunt brought from me. I hate it as much as you do. Reed hates it as well. Of course, I want to tell her that I keep it hung on the living room wall just so that Reed feels a _shred _of the frustration that I feel when his mother invades our home, but something tells me that won't go down as well as the whiskey does.

And yes, that _is _a games console. But before she can jump down my throat for that one, I make great pleasure in telling that it is in fact my _brother's _games console, and that the violent games lined up beside it with clear '15' and '18' ratings on all belong to my _brother_, not my _son_. And, of course, Franklin is seven years old. Not many seven year olds are capable of completing a Resident Evil game, and even if he was capable, I wouldn't want to pay for the years of therapy he'd no doubt need for it.

And so we go upstairs, where I am pointed out that Valeria's toys have small parts to them, and that Franklin's curtain rail is dirty. Would she like me to clean it? Yes, because that would really make a beneficial difference to my daily routine, knowing that my son's curtain rail has had a thorough cleaning, when Franklin probably isn't even aware that his curtains hang from anything other than thin air.

But at least after all that, I can leave her behind at home to get settled in, with her begrudgingly beloved Alfie for company, while I go to work where I help out part time at a genetics research lab. Then, when I leave work and come home with the kids after school is finished, Alfie comes running up to us the second the door is opened, wagging his tail as if he's never been happier to see us. I don't blame him. I was just as pleased to see Reed when he turned up from work, although I had the vocal ability to whisper threateningly to him.

"If she's not gone home by Friday, I'm going to stay at my fathers."

But, come Saturday morning, when I went to leave for my mothers house, there was Evelyn, with a falsely innocent look on her face.

"Where are you going, dear?" She asks, looking not-so-subtly at the large bag in my hand.

"Just to see my father for a while." A long while.

"Will you be home for dinner? I'm making Shepherd's Pie."

Great, she hasn't even realised that I actually plan on sitting on my childhood sofa in another living room eating Chinese food that night, and she's already jumping into the perfect housewife role.

Of course, her completely fake 'oh, did I just do that' demeanour throws a huge spanner in the works. With me walking out and not returning until she's more than ten miles away from my house, she'd assume I was leaving for good. If she assumes that, she'd _never _leave, and when I say never, I'd mean that she'd probably throw Reed in the spare room so that she can take the master bedroom for herself and her awful cat. Her awful cat which, by the way, thinks that Alfie is one of those scratching posts.

So, that night, I sat around my dining table, watching my kids eat Shepherd's Pie. _Her _Shepherd's Pie.

They never eat _my _Shepherd's Pie.

The weeks that followed were a strain on my sanity. Just how long _did _she plan on staying? She never told us how long, and when I asked her straight out, she just replied "Oh, just for a short break."

I considered a short break to be a weekend at Disney Land.

It was like being under government surveillance. Every action might invoke a '_hmm' _from her, whilst she sat drinking her endless cups of tea on the sofa. In the three weeks she says, I earned many reprimanding 'hmm's. One came when I was brushing Valeria's hair when it was wet, naturally full of tangles, and Valeria complained about it pulling just at the convenient moment when Grandma walked past. Another came when Alfie made a curious lick on Franklin's ear. The third one was the concluding sound of me and Franklin having a rather heated discussion about why he wasn't allowed to go to a party that three teenage boys on the playground had invited him to. After that, the lid of 'hmm's had been released. They stared flying out from nowhere; when I was helping Franklin with his homework, when Valeria had a tantrum in the middle of the weekly shop, and when the toaster breaking caused a power cut. I particularly liked this one, because she couldn't see the filthy look I shot in her general direction in the dark of the kitchen.

But _never_, not once, did Reed get a '_hmm'_. No, not Reed. Not _darling Reed_, Mommy's special little boy. He never got one of those withering looks and a '_hmm'_, not even when Franklin got into Johnny's Resident Evil game case and thought it would be brilliant to play Frisbee with it whilst Reed was doing the Sunday crossword in the paper. Not even when Valeria accidentally threw her cardigan onto the lamp, which knocked over a photo on the table, coincidentally, of Evelyn and her late husband with the children when Valeria had first been born. Not even, (and this is the big one), not even when Reed came back from a rainy, muddy walk with Alfie, and the peach coloured carpet in the hall was turned into a replica of a war trench. How they managed to get the mud on the highest corners of the walls, I don't know. I did leave it there for a while though, just to annoy Evelyn.

And then, after three weeks of draining emotional torture, _it _happened.

"I'll be leaving tomorrow afternoon, Reed, darling."

I almost choked on my wine. I didn't, of course, that would have been a waste of alcohol I needed to get through an incredibly long evening of watching antique repeats with Evelyn.

_It was all over._

She even gave me a '_hmm' _for being suspiciously happy the next morning.

So, when she walked away from the house, I felt it was perfectly acceptable to shut the door with more speed than a rocket ship. If I had a basket of flowers, I would have ran through the house, throwing them into the air in an insane way which might have made Reed suspect me of using illicit substances. However, with more composure than that, I turned to him, giving him the one threat that would actually make him panic.

"Invite her for that long again, and I'll invite my father for the holidays."

**I'm going to open this story up and take requests for other Sue-rants you'd like to see! Let me know in your reviews which you'd like! xxxx**


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